Photo Credits: © Lorenzo Zandri
Arrigoni Architects is a small, independent architectural practice based in East London. Founded in 2015 by Enrico Arrigoni, the studio operates with a quiet conviction: that architecture, when rooted in care, humility, and intellectual rigour, can elevate the human spirit.
Our projects range from furniture design and compact extensions to full renovations and medium-scale mixed-use developments, including ongoing work near Regent’s Canal in Tower Hamlets. Each commission—regardless of scale—is treated with the same attentiveness to time, context, and atmosphere.
Our work is grounded in lived experience. Enrico cycles between sites, sharing tea with builders on cold mornings and watching with joy as awkward details resolve themselves in timber, brick, or shadow. We are not spectators to construction; we dwell within it. The drawings and models we produce are not polished theatre, but tools for conversation and discovery with clients, engineers, and craftsmen.
Drawing on Enrico’s Italian background, our architecture seeks the grace of proportion before the seduction of materials. We believe buildings should serve their communities quietly and generously. We avoid tabula rasa thinking. Instead, we approach each project as an act of stitching (¹)—working with what exists, revealing beauty through careful repair.
We resist the polished, anonymous minimalism that dominates much of contemporary architecture. Our buildings are designed to age. They whisper rather than shout. They offer space for reflection, for cooking and resting, for insects to find shelter, and for patinas to grow. A good building does not demand attention; it remains in the periphery, sustaining life gently and modestly—like a discreet mother who respects her child’s independence, yet remains ready to help when needed.
After all, “Transparency is an ideology of a society that no longer knows what inwardness is.” (²)
Slowness, presence, and resistance to spectacle are part of our ethos. We believe that designing takes time. That stepping away from a project—even forgetting it briefly—is necessary to truly see it. That generosity in design cannot be value-engineered.
Above all, we aim to produce architecture that is economically honest, socially generous, and deeply human. We work with limited resources—not despite them, but because they offer clarity. When a space is well-lit, well-insulated, and truly ventilated, it can support its inhabitants with quiet dignity. And when a building is carefully composed, it becomes more than functional: it becomes a place where one might, as in Wenders’ Wings of Desire, leave enough room for an angel to stand beside you.
¹ Renzo Piano, on architecture as an act of mending
² Byung-Chul Han, “The Transparency Society”
Our projects range from furniture design and compact extensions to full renovations and medium-scale mixed-use developments, including ongoing work near Regent’s Canal in Tower Hamlets. Each commission—regardless of scale—is treated with the same attentiveness to time, context, and atmosphere.
Our work is grounded in lived experience. Enrico cycles between sites, sharing tea with builders on cold mornings and watching with joy as awkward details resolve themselves in timber, brick, or shadow. We are not spectators to construction; we dwell within it. The drawings and models we produce are not polished theatre, but tools for conversation and discovery with clients, engineers, and craftsmen.
Drawing on Enrico’s Italian background, our architecture seeks the grace of proportion before the seduction of materials. We believe buildings should serve their communities quietly and generously. We avoid tabula rasa thinking. Instead, we approach each project as an act of stitching (¹)—working with what exists, revealing beauty through careful repair.
We resist the polished, anonymous minimalism that dominates much of contemporary architecture. Our buildings are designed to age. They whisper rather than shout. They offer space for reflection, for cooking and resting, for insects to find shelter, and for patinas to grow. A good building does not demand attention; it remains in the periphery, sustaining life gently and modestly—like a discreet mother who respects her child’s independence, yet remains ready to help when needed.
After all, “Transparency is an ideology of a society that no longer knows what inwardness is.” (²)
Slowness, presence, and resistance to spectacle are part of our ethos. We believe that designing takes time. That stepping away from a project—even forgetting it briefly—is necessary to truly see it. That generosity in design cannot be value-engineered.
Above all, we aim to produce architecture that is economically honest, socially generous, and deeply human. We work with limited resources—not despite them, but because they offer clarity. When a space is well-lit, well-insulated, and truly ventilated, it can support its inhabitants with quiet dignity. And when a building is carefully composed, it becomes more than functional: it becomes a place where one might, as in Wenders’ Wings of Desire, leave enough room for an angel to stand beside you.
¹ Renzo Piano, on architecture as an act of mending
² Byung-Chul Han, “The Transparency Society”